By
Professor Emmanuel Konde
Department of History,
Political Science & Public Administration
(Presented on the occasion of U.S. International
Education Week at ASU, November 15, 2004)
____________________________________________________
Good morning! This event marks the beginning of activities
commemorating the 2004 U.S. International Education Week at Albany State
University. I want to thank Dr. Claude
Perkins and the ASU International Education Week Committee for giving me the
privilege of kicking-off this event. My
presentation is entitled “Albany State
University and Our Global Village:
Exploiting the Possibilities from Within.” What I propose to
accomplish is to lay the broad outlines for documenting international education
programs and activities at ASU. But
first, some prefatory remarks about my personal experience as a product of
international education would set the stage for my attempt at linking ASU to
the tradition of international education among historically black institutions
in the United States.
The result of nearly a quarter century
of European colonialism in Cameroon—as in many former European African colonial
territories—was the decolonization of my native land. Cameroon did not win her own independence;
independence was granted her. But freedom
granted by the oppressor is never the same as freedom won by the oppressed. Decolonization,
therefore, was by no means independence for Cameroonians, since we never won our
own independence. Our country was simply
decolonized by our European overlords.
This is how the neo-colonial situation came to be in Cameroon and in
much of Africa.
As you must have noticed and as many
have commented, I am a lone child around whom everything revolves. I was born
during a period of suffering of my people.
As a child, I spent much of my childhood years among adults, who tended
to show great respect for travelers because the latter were always full of
strange, exciting, and exalting tidings of faraway places that often jolted my
imagination. Thus, very early in my life
I internalized dreams of seeing the world, so that someday, in the distant
future, I too, like the travelers of my childhood days who had come to visit,
would return home to tell of the great wonders of distant places I would have
seen. Indeed, there is virtue in
learning about the cultures of other peoples from books and lectures; but it is
virtuous visiting and consorting with people of other cultures within the context
of their own countries. No other form of
education even comes close to approximating this type of experiential learning.
Little did I know during my childhood that
I would end up in the New World, school there, marry there, bear children
there, and raise a new breed of humankind that would speak not like me or my
forebears, but like what my people call the “white man.” It was a spectacle to behold last December
(2003), when I took my six-year-old son on a visit to Cameroon. I observed my family members across the
Atlantic examine my son with curiosity, referring to him as “talking like a
white man.” In as much as my American
child was an object of curiosity to my family members in Cameroon, in like
manner, they too, were a curious bunch to him. Yet curiosity, which is usually
evoked when people encounter the unfamiliar, spurs a desire to learn about
things unfamiliar. And so the meeting of members of my two families on the two
sides of the Atlantic constituted a
veritable learning experience—a sort of lesson in international education on a
small scale—for my son on the one hand, and for my extended family in Cameroon
on the other.
International education provides us a
broad perspective from which to understand the world and its peoples. It equips us with the ability to interact
with people from far and wide, an ultimately leads to expansion of our intellectual
horizons and worldviews. With the
shrinking of our world into a global village, the value of international
education is becoming all the more important, all the more inestimable.
Yes, I am a product of international
education. My first real encounter with
Americans occurred immediately upon my arrival at a Midwestern college, where I
spent my first four years in the United States. The scene of that initial encounter was the
college dinning hall, during a meal of chicken and mashed potatoes. That too, was my first real American meal. In the tradition of my people, I undertook
to eat the chicken with my fingers, and, in the process, chewed the bones in my
avid search for the marrow hidden inside the bones. There is something about bone marrow that I
am still at a loss to understand why my people like to eat it. My first discovery was that American chicken
bones were different from those of chicken found in Cameroon. American chicken bones are much softer, and
so my strong teeth tore them open with ease and facility, and the crackling
sound of chicken bones could be heard throughout the dinning hall. All eyes were turned to my direction in utter
amazement. My new college mates scurried
to my table to observe firsthand a man of exotic taste chewing chicken
bones. What followed was an avalanche of
strange questions, again, borne of curiosity, about my country of origin. Flung
at me from one corner of the table to another, their questions included: “Where
are you from?” “Do you live on trees and
in caves in your country?” “Do you ride
goats?” “Do you have cars?” “How did you get here?” Obviously, I had
created a sensation just by eating the way people of my culture did, and from
that point on I became very popular on campus.
As if the first encounter was not
enough, the spring semester of 1979 opened with another big surprise. This time it came from two African American
female school mates. My undergraduate
institution was predominantly white.
Blacks numbered only 12, of whom two came from Africa—Eric Anang (from
Ghana) and me. On that sunny spring afternoon,
Rhonda Moss and Karyn Officer accosted me immediately after lunch and thrust
the big question at me: “Emmanuel,” they queried, “why did your people sell us
into slavery?” I was completely
flabbergasted and taken aback. My
subdued answer was “I do not know.”
Since that time their question has haunted me like a nightmare. I finally laid it to rest a few weeks back when
I completed a book-length monograph on the “Origins of the European Slave Trade
in West Africa.” That enterprise took me
more than 20 years to execute. The
question of Rhonda and Karyn prompted me to study African history in graduate
school.
During my four years of college I spent
nearly every weekend and vacation with my host family—the Richard Kneed Family. For four years my host family made the
Hillsdale Country Club my place of recreation.
Born into the Presbyterian Church by parental association, my religious
affiliation endeared me to an American family that was ostensibly surprised by
my knowledge of the scriptures. Through
their intervention, I became an associate member of the First Presbyterian Church
in Hillsdale, Michigan. After church
service every Sunday, we would proceed to the country club for brunch. I learned how to ice skate in the winters,
and in the summers learned how to water ski.
In the spring I accompanied my host family on long trips, which included
family reunions. At first I was shy,
almost timid, and careful not to do or say the wrong things. As I learned the social mores and etiquette
of my American hosts, I gradually warmed-up, gained self-confidence, and became
more relaxed. But never was I able to
bring myself to call them by their first names, even when they insisted. My reluctance, I think, is a cultural baggage
brought from Cameroon I have never been able to lay down. I was effectively acculturated and transformed
into a bourgeoisie, but one without any capital of his own.
Of course, my kind hosts were very
curious about me. And so in the
beginning I was occasionally tested with some infantile exercises, which I
found rather amusing than insulting. I
was made to understand that Americans did not like aggressive people, but also
that they did not care much for wimps. I was taught to be insistent and
assertive, but in a non-aggressive way; to know when to, and when not to, be
assertive.
I have spoken rather glowingly about the
bright side of my experience in America.
But America has a dark side, too.
The dark side that W.E.B. DuBois had called the problem of the twentieth
century—the color line--more than one
hundred years ago. I had befriended one
David Odenbach upon arriving in the United States. David was a junior during my
freshman year. We met in Dr. Payne’s American Government class and studied
together. A few months before his graduation, he and his fiancé, one Marsha
Kaplinski were scheduled to marry. David
came from California and Marsha from Chicago, Illinois. David kindly invited me to the wedding, but
upon learning that a black person was going to be present, Marsha’s parents,
first generation immigrants from Poland, decided not to have me grace their
daughter’s wedding with my presence. It
is thus that I was effectively dis-invited
to my first American friend’s wedding because I happened to be black. At the
time I did not understand how a bride’s family could dis-invite the groom’s guest because in my native Cameroon it was
the groom’s family that paid for the wedding and usually decided on who could
attend a wedding from their own side.
But I later learned that in America it was the bride’s family that foots
the bill and therefore could determine the list of invitees.
Frankly, I was very disappointed and
took ill for a day or two. I had been
sheltered by host family and, through their intervention, accepted
everywhere. The Kaplinskis rebuff was my
first encounter with reality, which I eventually accepted. In as much as I could not understand what had
happened, I accepted the fact that I was in a new culture and a new way of
doing things had to obtain. Well, of
such is a partial narrative of my cultural education in America.
On Humans
and Institutions
My presentation is designed to provoke
thought… thought about where ASU now stands with respect to international
education, thought about how far ASU has come, thought about where ASU is
going. My approach is historical because
history is a contract between the past, the present, and the future; between
the dead, the living, and the yet-to-be-born.
But it is those of us in the present, the living, who constitute the
primary actors in history. It is our
responsibility to shape the future, through combining lessons from the past and
present in our deliberate efforts to give direction to the future.
Consequently, institutions, like humans
beings, must pause periodically to take stock of their accomplishments and to examine
the trajectory of their lives. What have
we accomplished? What were our successes
and failures? Why did we fail? What were our mistakes? And
how can we amend them? Because the lives
of institutions are intricately intertwined with those of the people who serve
them, especially the leaders, it is difficult to discuss institutions without
making mention of the men and women who fashion and administer institutional
policies.
Today, I want to pause for a moment to
examine the trajectory of international education at Albany State University. While
the picture appears to be somewhat blurry; and the record perhaps too recent
and sketchy to reconstruct with any degree of certitude, it is necessary to
begin the process of reconstruction now.
This is imperative upon us, particularly at this juncture when ASU is
rapidly changing. Change introduces
uncertainty, and uncertainty causes apprehension among some of us. But change is an integral part of growth and,
even among humans; we find that no person stays stagnant in childhood when
adolescence beckons them; and none in adolescence, when adulthood comes
calling. Ultimately we all grow old,
wither and die out!
The theme of this year’s International
Education Week at ASU is “Academic
Excellence: An Appreciation for Education on an International Level.” Consequently, some aspects of my presentation
will attempt to address this theme.
Because too often we expend a lot of effort and energy extolling the
virtues of others, sometimes forgetting that we, too, are also involved in similar
pursuits and that our work is as important as the work of others. My synoptic appraisal of international
education at ASU is twofold: (1) an expression appreciation of what has been
accomplished; and, (2) a tentative attempt at linking the history of ASU with
the long tradition of African American institutions of higher learning catering
to the educational needs of international students.
This dual approach would permit me to
connect the current effort at internationalizing ASU with the work of other HBCUs
dating back to the dawn of the twentieth century. I have adopted in my narrative a juxtaposing
of the past and present, with a view to presenting an ASU future in
international education whose outlines are already in the making. To that end,
my presentation is divided into three sections.
The first section examines the foundation laid by the founder of this
institution and the work of his successors to 1996; the second documents some
of the accomplishments of the last four years, 2000-2004; and the third
attempts to project some future trends. My desire is to initiate the practice of
documenting the accomplishments of ASU in international education, while hoping
that others will fill in the gaps, and improve on the shortcomings, of this
tentative appraisal.
This institution was founded in 1903 by
Dr. Joseph Winthrop Holley as Albany Bible and Manual Training Institute. The Institute’s original mission was limited
to providing religious and manual training for African American youths of
Southwest Georgia. With its financial
support coming mainly from private and religious organizations, Albany Bible
and Manual Institute undertook the training of teachers with the aim of
preparing them to teach basic academic skills and to instruct students in the
trades and industries. Special emphasis was placed on domestic science. When in 1917 Albany Bible and Manual
Institute became a state supported two-year college with a Board of Trustees,
its name changed to Georgia Normal and Agricultural College. Although the College’s educational program
focused primarily on agriculture, it also strove to train elementary school
teachers. In 1932, following the
establishment of the Board of Regents, Georgia Normal and Agricultural College
was incorporated into the newly established University System of Georgia.
From 1903 to 1943, Dr. Holley presided
over the early development of this institution and carefully laid the edifice upon
which it would eventually grow from an institute to a university. Always poised to meet the changes that were
taking place in the larger society, the institution smoothly adjusted its
programs to accommodate global change. In
1943, Georgia Normal and Agricultural College expanded to be in step with global
transformations. That same year the
College had its second president in the person of Dr. Aaron Brown, and it was
granted a four-year-status with authority to confer bachelor’s degrees in
elementary education and home economics, and it simultaneously assumed the name
Albany State College.
In 1949, the educational program of the
College was further expanded to include offerings in the arts and sciences,
with major fields in the humanities and social sciences. These developments finally resulted in the
establishment of new programs, beginning in 1954, when teacher preparation in
science, health and physical education, business, music, mathematics, and
natural sciences were added. Meanwhile,
a shift of leadership occurred in 1954, when Dr. William H. Dennis assumed the
office of president. Seven years later in
1961, under the presidency of Dr. Dennis, Albany State College was authorized
to offer a four-year degree program in nursing.
The fourth president, Dr. Thomas
Miller Jenkins, took over leadership of the College in 1965 and continued the
tradition of excellence and growth established by his predecessors. In response to the educational needs of its
constituencies as dictated by the changing times, the College’s graduate
program was developed in cooperation with Georgia State University and was
added to the curriculum in the fall of 1972.
The new graduate program offered master’s degrees in business education,
mathematics education, elementary education, English education, health and
physical education, and science education in three disciplines: biology,
chemistry, and physics. Three years later in the spring of 1975, a master’s
degree in business administration, in conjunction with Valdosta State College,
was added to the College’s graduate program.
The
1970s opened with new leadership at Albany State College. Dr. Charles L. Hayes, who took over from Dr.
Jenkins in 1969, supervised important transformational developments at the
College. It was during this decade that
the number of faculty with doctorate degrees more than doubled, a development
that enabled the College to offer, by 1981, a graduate program designed and
administered solely by its faculty and staff.
In 1980 Dr. Billy C. Black was installed as the sixth president of the
institution. Dr. Black managed the
establishment of new graduate offerings that conferred master’s degrees in
business administration and education.
Criminal justice and public administration were later added to the
graduate program during his tenure.
My first visit to Albany State College
was in 1996, when a graduating nursing student from Cameroon invited me to
attend her graduation. I retuned to ASU
in 2003 to interview for a teaching position in the Department of History,
Political Science, and Public Administration. Between 1996 and 2003, Albany
State had undergone a staggering transformation. Something new, something positive and
uplifting, had happened at ASU. It would
hardly be an exaggeration to attribute that “staggering transformation” to the
leadership of Dr. Shields, president of the institution.
As a student of history, it is a
requirement of my craft to attempt a reconstruction of what happened at ASU by
connecting the spectacular transformation of this institution to the leader who
presided over it. Dr. Portia Holmes
Shields came from Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. While there, Dr. Shields had been actively
involved in multicultural projects with various institutions of higher learning
during her tenure as Dean of Howard University’s School of Education. Dr. Shields also cultivated a cosmopolitan
outlook in education. She brought her cosmopolitanism to rural Georgia and
decided to transform Albany State College from a rural, local college into a
world-class university.
In her search for an able leader to
spearhead the project of internationalizing Albany State University, President
Shields sought out Dr. Claude Perkins, an educator and administrator with
extensive experience, and charged him with the responsibility of developing
international programs for ASU. In other
words, Dr. Shields commissioned the construction of international programs at
ASU; and Dr. Perkins was the architect who mapped out the project and oversaw
its construction. Dr. Perkins’
appointment coincided with the changes that were already underway. These changes
were being fashioned by the Board of Regents of the University System of
Georgia, and were focused particularly on exposing Georgia students to
international affairs through study abroad programs, efforts at internationalizing
the curriculum, the development of institutional affiliations with foreign
universities, etc.
Over the past four years, Dr.
Perkins has built on the long experience of African American institutions of
higher learning, which undertook to sponsor and train Africans beginning at the
turn of the twentieth century. Historically Black Colleges and Universities
like Tuskegee University and Lincoln University stand out among many. In
professional fields such as medicine, Howard University Medical School (1868)
and Meharry Medical School of Nashville (1876) played pivotal roles in training
African physicians. For example, the man who led the first African nation to
independence in 1957, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, was a product of Lincoln
University.
Some of the founders of South Africa’s
African National Congress (ANC), the political party that led the struggle
against white minority rule in South Africa, were educated in African American
institutions. These include P.K. Isaka
Seme, Professor John L. Dube, Solomon T. Plaatje, and Professor D.D.T. Jabavu. In
fact, the liberation of Africa from European colonialism was made possible by
African Americans, who tirelessly fought for their kin despite the conditions that
they themselves suffered in America. And,
without African American intercession on behalf of their oppressed brethren in
South Africa, black humankind there might still be languishing under Apartheid,
that last bastion of white minority rule.
It is indeed a strange twist of history: that the descendants of Africans
enslaved in white-owned plantations in America were the same people who would
rise centuries later to liberate the land of their ancestors!
While the work of African American
colleges and universities for Africa and Africans is yet to be completed, these
institutions are today opening their doors to ever-increasing numbers of
students from across the globe. To this
great task of our times, ASU has consciously placed itself as a major player. Barely
four years into this enterprise (2000-2004), Albany State University has
registered some rather astounding achievements. A partial record of these
accomplishments includes but is not limited to the following:
b). A Study
Abroad Program has been established with South Africa and is directed by Dr. Patricia
Ryan-Ikegwuonu ;
By
any measure of objective or subjective evaluation, these achievements, less
than five years in the making, are truly worthy of note.
There are more international students,
faculty, and staff today at ASU than at any other period in the history of the
institution. Given this current trend,
we cannot but expect these numbers to increase in the coming years. But the
presence of so many international faculty, staff, and students on this campus,
in and of itself, means very little. Of significance is the need to maintain
and even augment programs designed to educating ASU students for world citizenship.
In her Proclamation of the U.S.
International Education Week at Albany State University, President Shields accurately
noted in one of statements that “The heritage of the United States and its
educational institutions is an amalgam of international expression and
exchange.” This statement symbolizes and
bears testimony to Dr. Shields’ commitment to internationalize ASU. Currently, ASU boasts of 54 international
faculty and staff, and 43 international students. The international presence at
ASU comes from 26 countries and four continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, and the
Americas.
At this juncture ASU needs to vigorously
emphasize the other dimension of international education: the need for American,
especially African American students, to develop an active interest in
acquiring international experience. The
rest of the world is not made up of less civilized people. Even in Africa, a continent berated century
after century as “dark” and full of barbarians, an American can live a quality
of life that can otherwise be lived only in his or her dreams. Indeed, as President Shields again noted in
her proclamation, “International education provides a viable opportunity to
strengthen understanding and celebrate cultural diversity.” Studies have shown that African American
students are underrepresented in study abroad programs. This gap has to be bridged, if not filled, as
the world outside of the United States invites African American college
students to explore and exploit the available opportunities and possibilities. What many of our students may not know is
that those Americans who work abroad make more money than their counterparts at
home in the United States. They also
save more money because the standards of living in most countries outside of
Europe and Japan are lower than in the United States.
I foresee a community of scholars
and students at ASU continually expanding with the changing world. And with the development of programs
commensurate with educating a student body poised to compete effectively for
jobs and other opportunities globally, the future of ASU graduates will be
guaranteed. In preparing our students
for global citizenship, we must never forget to instruct them of the virtues of
the place that made it all possible.
Albany State University is the center of our universe and the nodal point
from which its products will be dispersed around the world.
An important ingredient to the
success of ASU in the coming years will depend largely on two important factors:
(1) collaboration of the faculty in sharing knowledge about changing trends in
international education as well as collaboration in developing essential
courses; and, (2) the augmentation and efficient delivery of services to
students. As international education
takes deep root at ASU, new sources of funding should be sought to enable
students study and intern abroad in American businesses and government
agencies. Such funding should be sought through creating working relationships
with American corporations that have international branches, and preparing our
students to intern in those locations during the summers or whenever the companies
demand their presence.
These connections will give ASU students
a competitive edge come graduation time.
As a matter of fact, with the current trend of outsourcing American jobs
abroad, a program of international internships would provide ASU students who
participate in the program with the requisite:
a). Language skills;
b). Familiarity with local cultures; and,
c). On-the-job work experience to ease into administrative positions in countries where American businesses are operating.
a). Language skills;
b). Familiarity with local cultures; and,
c). On-the-job work experience to ease into administrative positions in countries where American businesses are operating.
The administration of efficient student
services is important for both retention of continuing, and attraction of new, students. While ASU must aspire to provide all students
with first class services, two categories should be sought out for special
treatment: freshmen and seniors. Freshmen
because they are the most likely to bolt out if services are less than
desirable, and seniors because of the need to build a pool of alumni whose
departure from ASU must be crowned with fond memories. Disgruntled graduating seniors constitute a
big loss for any college or university.
After investing four years training graduates, ASU should expect
something in return from them and institution’s alumni should oblige. This is an obligation incumbent upon ASU and
its graduates. But it must be cultivated
with care and love. One of the better
ways to secure alumni loyalty is to ensure that graduates depart this campus as
satisfied customers.
Now that the enterprise of international
education has become part and parcel of ASU, we must set our sights on success
and nothing short of success. Thank you,
and may international education flourish at ASU.
